The BBC News website reports that the White Horse on the hillside above Uffington in Berkshire is to receive something of a facelift as sections of it - notably the head and neck - have diminished in width in recent years. Work has been undertaken to confirm this narrowing and remedial work will be undertaken.
The report can be seen at Uffington White Horse: Plans to fatten up shrinking Oxfordshire chalk figure
There is an introduction to the history of this great chalk figure, which does appear to have been maintained throughout its history by the local community, from Wikipedia at Uffington White Horse
The history of the horse is also mentioned alongside that of the village of Uffington in the entry on Wikipedia at Uffington, Oxfordshire
The same site also has an introduction to the mythology and significance of the white horse in various cultures at White horses in mythology
I am no prehistorian but the White Horse does strike me alongside the many other survivals of what we group together as being prehistoric as evidence for a high degree of social organisation in what might be termed political or religious structures. To create the great earthworks, the stone circles, the major burial complexes or the White Horse suggests considerable social organisation and motivation. About these we can only make hesitant guesses in the absence of the written records which only begin with chance references to late Iron Age events in Roman sources. Nevertheless what survives after so many centuries as part of the landscape is a powerful indicator of a complex series of societies across these islands.
The best view I have had of the White Horse was across the valley from a train heading westwards from Reading. On that occasion it was on a damp winter day, and my one visit to Ufington was on a very wet midsummer day with the landscape looking especially verdant and lush. Given that and the benign, if brooding, presence of the White Horse and the other ancient sites that accompany it the Vale has a sense of otherness and atemporality that makes it distinctive and atmospheric.
1 comment:
I sometimes think these prehistoric hillside carvings may have been used at night as a kind of son et lumiere display, with people positioned and maybe moving along the lines of the carving holding torches, which spectators could see from the valley below while some priest or reciter told them stories.
Perhaps they waited for clear nights, at certain times of year, so that a relevant stellar constellation (Pegasus?!) in the sky above the hill formed an apt and slowly moving backdrop!
Regards
John R Ramsden
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